In order to measure team outcomes, there should be an understanding of how teams make the decisions that lead to their established goals. Team decision-making is a highly complex individual cognitive process influenced by various environmental factors (Breiter & Light, 2006). The team approach to decision-making is based on the
assumption that groups are better at making decisions than individuals, and teams can achieve outcomes superior to the ones an individual can produce (Aube et al., 2011).
Benefits to Team Decision-Making
To ensure the team approach is successful, teams need to develop collaborative strategies that promote shared decision-making. From a historical context, shared decision-making allows for teams to commit to operate by consensus, respect one another’s styles, speak honestly, and advocate for the team’s decisions to their
constituencies (Kessler, 1992), thereby allowing for accurate decision-making (Barnard et al. 2001). Effective shared decision-making requires knowledge, skills, and
dispositions conducive to systematic gathering, analysis, and interpretation of relevant data (Reeves & Burt, 2006). One key tenet of shared decision-making is collaboration.
Collaboration is a process by which professionals engage in a nonhierarchical relationship to distribute responsibilities in order to develop interventions to promote a culture where people have a shared purpose (Burns et al., 2005; Knoeppel & Rinehart, 2010). Collaboration allows for the equal opportunity to participate, which can enhance
democratic decision-making (Barnard et al. 2001). Teams that collaboratively problem- solving think through an issue and gather data to understand in greater depth before solving it (Bernhardt, 2009; Knoeppel & Rinehart, 2010).
With respect to schools, not only does collaboration allow for students to be served amongst many teachers, but it also provides school personnel the opportunity to collectively develop appropriate interventions (Burns et al., 2005). Teaming creates relationships with participants that can help to enhance the effectiveness of programs through the decisions that are made (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006). Before collaboration can lead to effective decision-making, factors related to power, procedures, and purpose must be agreed upon (Clark & Flynn, 2011).
Decision-making Application in Education
Team decision-making can be applied to any organization. Decision systems developed in business organizations in Management Information Systems (MIS) or Decision Support Systems (DSS) have been recently generalized into the education field (Breiter & Light, 2006). These models highlight the importance of having information available to make informed, appropriate decisions. With respect to schools, qualities of the participants’ include their ability to be analytical observers who are both consciously and professionally competent, helping ensure decisions are made with a greater sense of reliability (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 2005). Having high-quality team
participants allows for schools to adopt a systematic, team-based process for using data to inform classroom instruction and support teachers’ efforts to meet the individual needs of their students (Algozzine, Newton, Horner, Todd, & Algozzine, 2012).
decision-making in schools through professional learning communities (PLCs). They discuss how there are various components to a team’s rational thinking when making decisions, including shared beliefs and personal practices, collective learning, and supportive leadership and conditions. These principles can help teams interpret student responses that lead to reasoned, creative approaches. According to them, it is this reliance on shared, collective work (i.e. PLCs) that promotes discourse and allows teams to arrive at appropriate decisions.
From a historical context, the field of education has seen an increased role in the decision-making responsibilities of school personnel and the types of decisions made within both a school and district system (Kimpston & Anderson, 1982). Moreover, established decision-making models designed to structure group decisions have been applied to schools, such as the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and the Delphi Techniques (Moore, Fifield, Spira, & Scarlatto, 1989). According to the NGT model, team participants need to accomplish six steps. These steps include writing ideas
individually, offering one idea at a time until all ideas have been presented and recorded, discussing each shared idea, conducting an initial individual rank ordering of ideas, interacting collectively about this initial vote, and reaching a final resolution.
Marzano, Walters, and McNulty (2009) discuss how adopting shared team decision-making practices allow for the leader of the school to indirectly increase the school’s relations and resources, predominantly because accurate decision-making leads to increased school effectiveness. Noel et al. (2008) discuss providing schools site-based decision-making practices. They argue that in order for schools to become the primary unit of management for educational improvement, there needs to be a greater
decentralization from school districts. Since school stakeholders have direct, first-hand knowledge of the relevant school issues, they should therefore have the power and authority to make the decisions particular to their specific needs.
To apply this theory, Noel et al. (2008) interviewed six principals and teachers from Texas high schools to measure the ways site-based decision-making committees influence the decision-making process at their schools, and how this type of decision- making influences a school’s culture. Their results showed inconsistency between teacher and principal perspectives with respect to principal involvement in the decision- making process. Specifically, principals perceived there to be greater input provided by site-based decision-making committees as compared to the perceptions of the teachers on those same committees. This shows that each team members’ individual perspective may influence the types of decisions that the team makes collectively.
The attitudes and beliefs of the team members can also influence the decisions they make, including the adverse impact teacher bias may have on team decision-making (Goodman & Webb, 2006). Other educational decision-making influences include the team members’ knowledge, effectiveness and perceptions (Evans & Owens, 2010), and the overall approach and type of decision-making model teams use (Lau et al., 2006). The structure of the team also requires a consistent objective review of the decision- making process (Goodman & Webb, 2006).
Data-Driven Decision-Making in Schools
The availability of relevant information is a necessary condition for data-based decision-making (Bernhardt, 2009), which requires the use of quantitative and/or
to use data to guide decision-making, differentiating between relevant versus irrelevant data is essential (Breiter & Light, 2006). The information must not overload or
complicate the decision-makers, and should instead provide them with the ability to make the appropriate decision(s).
The use of data allows schools to make instructional decisions, and is an important part of the role of educators (Knoeppel & Rinehart, 2010; Reeves & Burt, 2006). Decisions based on data require school teams to understand how they are currently performing, know if they are meeting their goals, evaluate what is and is not working, and predict success by preventing failure (Bernhardt, 2009). However, it is important to recognize that decision-makers at different levels of the school system require different information, and that team decisions require data to be provided to a wide range of stakeholders (Breiter & Light, 2006).
The tools used to collect data must inform an educator’s practice in meaningful ways, and help lead the team to recognizing current need areas (Bernhardt, 2009; Evans & Owens, 2010). Breiter and Light (2006) discuss that once the data is collected, it is transformed first into information and then into team knowledge. This transformation occurs in five sequential steps: organizing, summarizing, analyzing, and synthesizing, which can then lead to the pinnacle step, decision-making. They purport that following these steps will allow teams to make informed decisions.
Data-driven decision-making is not guaranteed to succeed. For example, the data may be ignored by the team during the decision-making process (Breiter & Light, 2006). Reeves and Burt (2006) interviewed principals of schools with decision-making teams, and identified a number of challenges for effective team decision-making. Specifically,
principals indicated the need for training teams on how to interpret data that guides informed decision-making, the need for teams to be objective in their decisions, and the critical step of implementing consistent processes and procedures.
Although group decision-making models have been widely applied in business and social research, they have rarely been used with teams addressing areas of student weakness and nonperformance. Within schools, team decision-making can address the area of nonperformance through RtI. However, before studying specific predictors of RtI decision-making and the influences that impact RtI team members, a more general
analysis of a school decision-making is first needed. A closer look will now be taken at how teams make decisions related to students who are demonstrate areas of difficulty.